home
by queen ino
Summary: Sakura knows that no matter how long he wanders, or how far, that he'll always come back to her. —SasuSaku.


hahahahahaha idek

here have some sasusaku to celebrate becoming canon!

i don't own naruto!

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Sakura cradles Sarada against her chest, rocking back and forth in the small space that the window seat allows, and lays her head against the cool glass. The sky in her line of vision is dark and unrelenting, the stars barely visible. There are still a few out, though, blinking like diamonds against the cold black of the night sky. She can see pieces of constellations, ones that Sasuke had pointed out to her on one of the many nights they'd lain outside stargazing after the war, when everything was peaceful and they had the time for that.

Now, those sorts of memories aren't created anymore; or, at least, not as often as they were. Just barely four years after the end of the war, after their relationship had become something absolute and solid and real, he'd taken up his traveling cloak and his boots and headed out into the world again. She knows what he's doing, she does—he's trying to make up for everything, for all of the things that he'd done during his time away from Konoha, away from them. And she understands it, too; he wants to erase the red, the splatters of blood and bad, and replace it all with black, a positive mark on the world.

But that doesn't mean she has to like it. And how could she, when it takes him away from her? After so many years of chasing and trying and failing to get him back, to rescue him from the dark, she finally has him back, the boy she's loved for so long. She'd gone with him, in the beginning, travelling all around the five countries to the minor villages, helping Sasuke help others. When she discovered that she was expecting a child three years ago, though, she'd known that she couldn't drag a child into their travels. That was no way for a child to grow up, even if it had meant they stayed together.

He'd gone back to Konoha with her, stayed all through her pregnancy, through Sarada's first year of life; and she'd thought that had been the end of his travels, the beginning of the rest of their lives. Then he'd sat her down, explained gently and softly and apologetically that he couldn't stay here, happy and healthy and with them when there was still red in his ledger, still things for him to atone for. She'd yelled and screamed and cried, been more angry than she'd been in a long time; she'd thought, even, about leaving him. But she couldn't do that to Sarada, to herself, or to him; not after the war that she'd been through to bring him back. So she had accepted it, though in no way happily, and while she's come to understand exactly why he had left again over the past two years, she's still unhappy with his absence.

She turns her attention back to the view from the window, to the dark night sky just barely beginning to lighten with the first notes of dawn. As her eyes flit from star to star to star, a flicker of movement catches her attention, and her eyes are immediately drawn to the object.

It's a star—a shooting star. She looks down at Sarada, cuddled up against her, with her head resting on her shoulder, and says under her breath, soft enough not to wake Sarada but loud enough to be heard by whoever might be able to hear and grant her desire, "I wish that he would come back."

The front door opens, then, and a voice calls out, soft but so loud in her head that it drowns out everything else, focusing in on only these words: "Sakura? Are you here?"

She stands, and carefully sets Sarada down on their couch, large and soft and littered with pillows. There's a blanket draped across the back, printed with the Uchiha clan's symbol, and she tucks it around her daughter carefully, ensuring that she'll stay warm.

When she finishes and turns to go to the hall, to go to him, she finds that he has already come to her. He drops his bags where he stands, and reaches for her, and she stands on the very tips of her toes and loops her arms around his neck, and just before their lips meet, their eyes do, and they whisper six words to each other, every single one drenched in meaning.

"I'm so glad you've come home."

"I'm so glad to be home."

Their lips meet, and they need no more words.


End file.
